Do It Myself Blog – Glenda Watson Hyatt

(Photo credit: Marcel Hol)

Yesterday my friend and blogger extraordinaire Liz Strauss posed the question: What do you do when people are looking at you?”

Being in a wheelchair with an obvious physical disability, people look most times I head out my front door. People look because we are curious. We notice that which is different. I admit my head whipped around when passing a guy, wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase, had a green spiky haircut. In a way, looking acknowledges one’s existence.

However, there is a point when a look becomes a stare. Mind you, not all stares are bad. In wonder, we stare at babies. In awe, we stare at the stars. In admiration, we stare at a person’s face.

Other times, staring can be intrusive, reduce dignity, and inflict shame. Stares “reinforce the strongly held notion that being different is somehow shameful, that being different is some how at odds with universal human experience.” (from Staring Back)

Eli Clare, poet and activist, eloquently shares her experience:

Gawking, gaping, staring: I ca*n’t say when it first happened. When first a pair of eyes caught me, held me in their vice grip, tore skin from muscle, muscle from bone. Those eyes always shouted, “freak, retard, cripple,” demanding an answer for tremoring hands, a tomboy’s bold and unsteady gait. It started young, wherever I encountered humans. Gawking, gaping, staring seeped into my bones, became the marrow. I spent thirty years, shutting it out, slamming the door. Thirty years, and now I am looking for lovers and teachers to hold all my complexities and contradictions gently, honestly, appreciatively.

What can you do when people stare?

• Take a deep breath and lift your head high. You have nothing to feel ashamed about.
• Look them straight in the eye and smile. When a smile begins creeping across their face, they become aware of their inappropriate behaviour. Occasionally this works beautifully and a connection is made without a word being uttered.
• Use my Mom’s line, “Take a photo. It’ll last longer.” With my speech, I haven’t used this strategy myself. Imagining the potential response makes me smile, though.

How do you feel when people look at you? When they stare? What do you tell children when they are hurt by others staring?

Inspired by Chris Brogan’s Social Media 100 and Becky McCray’s Small Biz 100 series – 100 useful and practical blog posts on their area of expertise, I am excited to announce that I will soon be launching Accessibility 100!

Accessibility 100 is a series of 100 easy-to-implement tips for improving accessibility for people with disabilities. To show that improving access for people with disabilities, this series will focus on the free and inexpensive tips that anyone can use. (The future Accessibility 200 series will provide tips that involve more effort and more cost.)

My plan is to launch Accessibility 100 during National Access Awareness Week in Canada, the first week of June – if I can wait that long!

Blog posts in the works include:

• 10 Tips for Communicating with People with Disabilities
• 5 Ways to Improve the Accessibility of Blogs
• 9 Tips for Making Your Writing Accessible
• Tips for Making Job Interviews Accessible
• Tips for Making Job Postings Accessible
• 3 Tips for Increasing Your Attitude’s Accessibility

Other ideas in the post hopper are:

• How to make locations more accessible
• How to use distance working to accommodate
• Simple customer accommodations

To ensure I cover a wide range of topics, I’d love to hear from you. What ideas do you have for the Accessibility 100 series? What would you like to know how to make accessible? What questions do you have about accessibility? Feel free to leave your questions, ideas and comments. Let’s make this a group project!

Thursday’s post invited readers to ask me questions, to ask anything. (Questions are still welcomed!) AnneShirley asked, “I know you must have down moments. What do you do to cheer yourself up?”

Thanks for your question, AnneShirley. Yes, like anyone, I do have my down moments – when I feel frustrated or when life becomes overwhelming. In those moments, I often turn to music to relieve frustration, to inspire and to reenergize.

The following five songs have become my life’s soundtrack:

1. Never Give Up On Dream by my fav Rod Stewart who wrote the song as a tribute to Canadian Terry Fox during his Marathon of Hope. I’ve been known to play the song repeatedly to get back into the head space I needed to be in.

2. Sweet Surrender by John Denver – I won my gold medal riding to this one.

(This video also includes Take Me Home, Country Roads, which always reminds me of a family friend Chris who was taken from us way too young by a drunk driver. He was only sixteen. We still miss you, Chris.)

3. Tina Turner’s Simply the Best – who isn’t reenergized after this one?!

4. Elvis Presley’s I Did It My Way is very much how I live my life. I find it analogous to I’ll Do It Myself.

5. Peter O’Toole’s The Impossible Dream saw me through writing, editing and self-publishing my autobiography when that dream seemed impossible. (The video’s audio isn’t the greatest quality.)

What is playing on your life’s soundtrack?

Following a month of sporadic blogging due to my husband’s unexpected hospital stay, I am ready to find my blogging groove again! The problem is I’m running on empty for ideas.

This is where you, my loyal readers, can help. Do you have a burning question you have been wanting to ask me? Now is your chance. Questions may help spark post ideas.

Your question may be about:

• living with a disability
• how to make something accessible
• my book I’ll Do It Myself
• virtual book tours
• whatever else is on your mind

Anything.

Go ahead, ask me!

I’d love to hear from you!

With Darrell recovering nicely from gall bladder surgery, I can now resume my other commitments, including misbehaving!

Two days before the unexpected ordeal began, we had attended the Misbehaving Women Event – a fundraiser for the Avalon Women’s Centres. “Misbehaving Woman of the Year” Awards were presented to those who embody Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s quote “well behaved women seldom make history”. The awards honours women who have refused to be pulled into the cultural drift of complacency, who have dared to make a difference, taken a risk and enhanced the lives of women in her community.

Isabella and Glenda – two misbehaving women

Isabella Mori, who met me somewhere along my virtual book tour and we have since become Twitter buddies, kindly nominated me for an award. I gave a short acceptance speech using my laptop.

The transcript follows:

Thank you for your kind words, Isabella. I truly appreciate it.

When I told my husband Darrell that I was nominated for a Misbehaving Woman Award, he said it was about time I was caught for misbehaving! He has learned to expect the unexpected from me.

The “Misbehaving Woman of the Year” Award

Thinking about what I might say tonight, one story came to mind. Several years ago, Darrell and I visited Van Duessen Gardens. Upon paying the admission, we received a map showing the various paths, including the nicely paved ones designated for wheelchairs. I wanted to spend the next few hours enjoying the gardens. I didn’t want to spend that time reading a map to follow the wheelchair path. The map was quickly tossed into Darrell’s bag on the back of his wheelchair and off we went, wandering the gardens without knowing what was around the next corner.

This story sums up how I have chosen to live life. People have expected me to take the nicely paved path laid out for the disabled. They expected me not to try, not to accomplish and not to succeed. That map was tossed out long ago. I have followed my own path as a person, a woman, who happens to have a physical disability. If following my ambitions, my passions, my dreams and helping people along the way, in spite of this disability, is misbehaving, then I am going to continue misbehaving! Thank you.

Women celebrating women was a great way to spend an evening!